Business Insider, by Leanna Garfield, 23 Jan 2018
Inside Plenty’s first farm in South San Francisco, California. Plenty
- The vertical farming startup Plenty just announced that it plans to build 300 organic, indoor farms in or near Chinese cities.
- In late 2017, the company scored $200 million in the largest-ever ag-tech deal. The funding round was led by Softbank Ventures and included DCM Ventures as well as funds that invest on behalf of Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
- Due to rising concerns surrounding food safety, middle-class Chinese consumers are increasingly willing to pay a premium for organic produce.
In the past two decades, China has experienced several food scandals. Between 2001 and 2006, toxic mushrooms killed 148 people and poisoned over 500 others in Yunnan. In 2010, Hunan police shut down a large operation that produced “green beans” from dyed soybeans.
As a result, a growing number of Chinese residents are turning to organic produce, which is considered safer since its production is more regulated, according to The Guardian.
A Jeff Bezos-backed indoor farming company called Plenty will soon harvest some of this organic produce. But unlike traditional farms, it will grow crops on LED-lit 20-foot-tall towers, which do not require soil, pesticides, or even natural sunlight. The technique is called vertical farming.
Plenty says it will build 300 vertical farms in or near major Chinese cities, where it will capitalize on the country’s growing middle-class demand for organic produce. The first farm will open next year, Bloomberg reports. In Beijing and Shanghai, the company will also build centers where customers can taste produce.
(Bloomberg) — Vertical farming startup Plenty Inc. plans to build 300 indoor farms in or near major Chinese cities to meet rising demand from the country’s middle-class who are willing to pay more for safer food.
The company also plans to set up what it calls experience centers in Beijing and Shanghai so that local residents can taste raw vegetables, Chief Executive Officer Matt Barnard said in Beijing Wednesday. The first farm will be built in about a year.
Eating raw vegetables isn’t popular in China, partly due to safety concerns. Families generally fry or boil vegetables to mitigate the impact of any residues from pesticides and chemical fertilizers, according to Barnard. China will speed up production of high-quality and “greener” farm products as it focuses on quality over quantity, agriculture minister Han Changfu said Tuesday.
The vertical indoor farms will help in saving more water and soil and produce higher yields than traditional farms, said Barnard. The farms would help the world’s most-populous country meet challenges such as shrinking water and land resources, he added. In July, SoftBank Group Corp’s Vision Fund led a $200 million investment in the Silicon Valley startup.
To date, the Silicon Valley startup has raised $226 million. In July, $200 million came from a Series B funding round led by SoftBank Vision in the largest ever ag-tech deal. The round included DCM Ventures as well as funds that invest on behalf of Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. In a past interview with Business Insider, Plenty CEO Matt Barnard said the company hopes to eventually sell its organic produce for the same price as traditional produce. Plenty plans to drive down operational costs by automating its growing processes as much as possible.
In the spring, Plenty will open a 100,000-square-foot farm in the greater Seattle, Washington area. The 100,000-square-foot warehouse facility will grow 4.5 million pounds of greens annually, which is enough to feed around 183,600 Americans, according to the USDA. The company also has a smaller non-production facility in Wyoming, where it has tested different growing processes for over 300 crops.
SEE ALSO: Kimbal Musk — Elon’s brother — predicts a movement of millennial workers fleeing desk jobs for farms
Kimbal Musk — Elon’s brother — predicts a movement of millennial workers fleeing desk jobs for farms, by Leanna Garfield, Business Insider, 22 Jan 2018
Josh Aliber, a 25-year-old urban farming entrepreneur who is part of the Square Roots program in Brooklyn, New York. Sarah Jacobs
- In an interview with Business Insider, Kimbal Musk said he sees a growing movement of young, highly educated people leaving their sedentary office jobs to become local and organic farmers.
- The number of farmers under 35 years old is increasing, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s latest Census of Agriculture.
- This new crop of young farmers will likely continue to bolster the local food movement across the United States.
After more than a decade working in tech, Kimbal Musk (brother of Elon) decided to lean into his true passion: local food. He now runs a chain of local food-focused restaurants called The Kitchen, as well as Big Green, a national nonprofit that builds educational gardens in public schools.
So it might not be surprising that he expects a growing number of young Americans to join him in the local farming movement.
When asked to name a big food trend looking forward into 2018, Musk said he sees millennials flocking to careers in agriculture rather than traditional office jobs.
“For the past 20 years, I think that technology has been a wonderful benefit for us in so many ways, but it’s not a very connected life. Social connectivity has really suffered because of technology. But we see urban farmers sell direct-to-consumer and be a part of their community,” he told Business Insider. “I see millennials leaving their office jobs to be in the urban farming community, because they get a connection back to their community.”
There is some data to back up Musk’s hunch. For only the second time in the last century, the number of farmers age 25 to 34 is increasing, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s latest Census of Agriculture. In some states, including California, Nebraska, and South Dakota, the number of new farmers has grown by 20% or more since 2007. Approximately 69% of these young farmers have college degrees — a figure that’s more than double when looking at the general US population.
Musk noticed this trend a few years ago, which is partly why he cofounded Square Roots — an indoor farming accelerator aimed at young Brooklynites — with friend and entrepreneur Tobias Peggs in 2016. The Square Roots compound consists of 10 steel shipping-container farms where farmers develop their indoor farming startups. Unlike traditional outdoor farms, vertical farms grow soil-free crops indoors and under LED lights.
Electra Jarvis, a 28-year-old college graduate who was part of the first Square Roots class, told Business Insider that she went from academia to agriculture so that she could directly impact New York City’s local food system. She now manages her own vertical farming business called Green Food Solutions.
As The Washington Post notes, the migration of this new generation to farms could have a wide-reaching impact on the US food system. According to the USDA census, compared to older farmers, those under age 35 are more likely to grow organically, limit their fertilizer and pesticide use, and manage plots that are less than 50 acres. They are likely contributing to the recent decline in large-scale industrial farming.
“When people try real food, they don’t go back to industrial food. It just doesn’t taste good,” Musk said.
The US is making a big shift away from factory farming, by Gus Lubin, Business Insider, 8 Feb 2017
The US is quietly making historic progress on farm animal welfare, with ten states and hundreds of brands coming out against the most notorious kinds of factory farming.
“You’re seeing almost every major retailer, almost every major fast food producer and restaurant chain committing to phasing out the use of battery cages and/or gestation crates,” ASPCA Farm Welfare director Daisy Freund tells Business Insider. “We are going beyond our dreams here, and yet we’re really just getting started.”
Wins for farm animal welfare in the past few years include:
—More than 100 big brands, from Walmart to McDonalds, committing to phasing out battery cages for egg-laying hens over the next 3 to 10 years.
—Lots of big brands committing to phasing out gestation crates for pigs.
—Big brands including Whole Foods, Aramark, and Compass committing to humane conditions for broiler chickens by 2024.
—Ten states banning excessive animal confinement in one form or another, with Massachusetts passing the most comprehensive bill yet in November.
—State legislatures repeatedly rejecting “Ag-Gag” or “Right to Farm” bills that prohibit investigations into industrial farms, with the latest example in Oklahoma.
—The USDA introducing a new rule mandating better living conditions for organic-certified animal products.
These developments could be enough to force changes in the industry.
“The market is shifting,” says Freund. “[Producers] have to move forward, they have to start adjusting their infrastructure, they have to start investing in cage-free environments at the very least.”
Changes in the US market could also have global effects, especially when commitments by US brands apply to their international businesses. In many cases, the international markets are already far ahead of the US on farm animal protection.
It’s not all good for farm welfare advocates. Indeed, President Donald Trump has some people worried, with Mother Jones warning that his nominee for ambassador to China is in deep with the meat industry and his nominee for head of the EPA is a supporter of Ag-Gag bills; and Forbes warning that Trump could jeopardize the USDA’s new organic rules.
Still, the ASPCA is celebrating 2016 as a great year for animal rights and the past few years as good for farm animals in particular.
“In the last five years, especially, this has gone from being a fringe issue … to where it is now, where through investigations and media coverage and documentaries and corporate commitments to change, it’s increasingly clear to the American public that what’s happening on factory farms is unacceptable,” Freund says.
Currently, 99% of US farm animals are raised on factory farms, according to the ASPCA. That number could go down in the coming years, or factory farms themselves could evolve.
Because these changes are only beginning, concerned shoppers still need to be careful what they buy. The ASPCA offers a shopping guide and endorses three animal welfare certifications: Animal Welfare Approved, Global Animal Partnership (steps 2 and above), and Certified Humane. (Labels like “Natural” and even “grass-fed” or “cage-free” are often unregulated and unaudited.)
Improving conditions for chickens doesn’t take a lot. Getting to step 2 on the Global Animal Partnership, for instance, means providing both cage-free living conditions and enrichments like perches, hay bales, and hanging CDs that reflect the light.
“These can seem silly, but they’re extremely important,” Freund says. “Chickens are sentient, intelligent creatures, and having interesting objects that they can jump up on or hide behind is not not only good for their own physical health … but also allows them to exercise their natural curiosity and their natural desire to do things like perch, which if denied to them is really a form of cruelty.”
